"If you don't consume as much as somebody else, you can pay less. If you want to consume more, fine, just pay more," Glenn Britt told attendees at the 2009 Cable Show, sponsored by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

The approach is "erroneously referred to as caps," Britt said. "It's not punitive."

"We have to provide people with choice, which is how our economy works," he said. "And there is a cost to consuming a lot more bits. It's not just speed, it's how you consume, and if you download movies all day, it costs more. If all you do is sign on and read e-mail, it costs less."

The issue made headlines in 2007, when Comcast came under fire for cutting off service to customers who consumed a large amount of bandwidth but refusing to provide those customers with information on how much bandwidth they were able to use.

Caps fly in the face of the "unlimited" Internet access advertised by many ISPs. Companies such as Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner, however, stress that the average consumer will probably never bump up against a cap.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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